The 20 Best Onion Articles About Music

Last month, when Taylor Swift released her first new song since 2014, “Look What You Made Me Do,” takes of varying temperatures poured in. While we were partial to our own as well as the Guardian’s characterization of it being Swift’s heel turn, perhaps the most on-point bit of Dark Swift commentary came from an organization that pioneered the concept of fake news. “Taylor Swift Unveils Even Darker Persona With New Single ‘Skullfucking Maggot Shit Boyfriend,’” wrote The Onion. Catchy, right?

As longtime readers of the satire publication know, The Onion has been skewering the absurdities of musicians and their fans since practically its founding, nearly 30 years ago. While each passing presidential administration may require different approaches from The Onion—hyperbole doesn’t work anymore, for instance—the site’s musical mockery hits consistent high notes with its characterizations of the culture surrounding rock, pop, and occasionally hip-hop.

Here are 19 instances when The Onion’s fake news about music felt almost too real (or just undeniably funny) for us here at Pitchfork, plus an all-timer from Onion sister site ClickHole.

“I became fascinated with the subject when I overheard a couple of lying shitheads saying they’d seen all of Jazz, even though they couldn’t mention the first thing about Dave Brubeck or Dizzy Gillespie—I just knew I had to explore that story.”

“I get the argument that you might be able to goose your ROI by a few percentage points with a tremolo groove that gets more and more vicious with each repetition. But to hack its balls off by cutting the tempo to anything less than 180 [beats per minute] would be ludicrous from a cost-benefit perspective.”

“As his inspiration for sequestering himself in the wilderness, Ruskin cited several musical luminaries—such as Justin Vernon of the critically acclaimed indie rock band Bon Iver—who have at times gone to similar lengths in order to work on their music without distraction. Ruskin, however, was quick to dispel any notion that this implied he would actually be producing something of lasting or even passing creative value.”

“When I tweet about the fact that I have cut my iconic hair and it is re-tweeted 300,000 times in a day, there is no better juxtaposition than to place that trifling 24 hours against the 10,000 years it will take Byrd Glacier to move across Antarctica's vast expanses of silent white.”

“‘Grammy day is my favorite day in the whole wide world,’ a giggling Yorke said as he eagerly snuggled up beneath his covers, his bedroom strewn with drawings of Grammy statuettes and magazine cutouts of today’s biggest pop superstars.”

“Recently, aides confirmed Ahmadinejad’s relationship with Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who agreed with the president’s remarks that Israel should be wiped off the map, had been strained after the ayatollah issued a fatwa declaring R.E.M. had ‘totally sold out’ with the release of Green.”

“‘We can only hope that [music] will begin to grow with its fans over the next few millennia,’ [Pitchfork founder Ryan] Schreiber said. ‘If it can stick to what it does well, namely the song “Peg” by Steely Dan, and Tuvan throat singing, then a sophomore effort will indeed be something to get excited about.’”

Worth noting: A poster-sized blow-up of this article hangs in Pitchfork’s Chicago office; for many years, it was right next to the toilet.